SOCI601 - CONTEMP SOC THEORY

This is a graduate-level seminar structured around the main theoretical debates of contemporary sociology, including the interplay of rationality and emotion, the relationship between structure and agency, the nature of power, and the role of chance and contingency. In condisering alternative positions on these debates, we will encounter the major theorists of the past fifty years, including Parsons, Merton, Goffman, Homans, Schutz, Coleman, Bourdiew, Luhmann, Habermas, Collins, and Giddens. Requirements include intensive primary source reading, writing, and participation. The course assumes, and does not provide, prior familiarity with the main theoretical perspectives, and thus does not substitute for the undergraduate theory course (Soci 126)